It was nearly dawn when Daniel awoke, strands of light fraying the sky. He was on the couch in his study, covered loosely with a blanket. Memories churned in his mind. Manticores, blackmail, and Kochi children who had died but knew how to live forever: by slipping into the minds of their killers.
Daniel got up, sure he was supposed to be somewhere. He remembered coming home when it was still dark and needing a drink. He wondered if Rebecca had woken up and found him missing. His body ached, his head thick from the whiskey. He decided to sleep it off in bed. As he crossed the study, he sensed movement behind him. He flicked on a sconce and turned to find Rebecca at his desk, spinning slowly in his chair, arms folded.
He squinted against the light. “What are you doing in here?”
She paused with her back to the room, then spun back to face him. “I could ask you the same thing,” she said softly.
“I got home late from the office.”
“Very late,” she said, continuing to spin.
He apologized and added, “I kept working when I got home. I must have fallen asleep.”
“So you clean your desk before you take a nap?” Rebecca swept her hand over the mahogany surface. “You put all your work away before moving to the sofa? There’s not a single file or notebook here.”
There was no right answer to this, so he said, “I didn’t want to wake you.”
She nodded. “You’re always so considerate.”
He asked her how long she had been in the study. No more than a few minutes, she assured him. “I put the blanket on you. You looked cold.” She bit her nails. “What time did you come home?”
“I don’t know, Becca.”
Pushing her unpolished toes into the floor, she made the chair spin over and over. “Aren’t you getting dizzy?” Daniel said, more sharply than he’d meant.
“Aren’t you? This must make you disoriented, not knowing when you came home, not knowing when you went to sleep.” She rose, pushing against the desk. She had on blue pajamas and a silk robe. Embroidered on the breast pocket was a butterfly.
“I’m tired.” Daniel walked over to the desk and touched her hand, hoping it would bring the exchange to an end. It didn’t. She removed her hand with a proprietary yank.
“I told you, I worked late. I’m sorry, Becca.” He meant it. He was sorrier than he could ever explain to her. “Let’s go upstairs.”
“It’s four in the morning,” she said. She glanced at the window each time she heard a sound. The slap of a moth’s wings against the glass. The distant hum of a car switching gears as it sped along the paved road, blocks away. Rebecca narrowed her eyes as if struggling to understand how everything outside could go on as normal.
“I’m going to make some tea,” he said. On the way to the kitchen, he found his briefcase by the stairs. He heard the soft tread of her slippers behind him.
“Ahmad brought that in from the courtyard,” she said.
In the kitchen he stood in front of the stove, watching the kettle. His limbs felt too heavy to make tea. Too heavy to do anything but stand. The cuckoo clock painstakingly ticked away the minutes. He moved to the refrigerator, opened the door, and simply stood there. Rebecca was behind him. She took his hand and stroked his fingers as if afraid they might break. “Daniel?”
“Yes.”
She wrapped her arms around him tightly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Right,” he said.
“Listen to me. Please. You couldn’t have avoided her. It wasn’t your fault.” She turned him to face her. He nodded.
“Talk to me,” she said.
“About what?”
She shook her head and made a sound of disbelief. “You think we can just take August seventeenth off the calendar, like it never happened?” she said. “Just leave it out, like the thirteenth floor of a building?”
“Becca, what do you want from me?”
Her voice broke and she fell into him. “Daniel,” she said. “My God.” The force of her sorrow brought out a strength in him, and he pulled her so close he was afraid they both might suffocate. She buried her face in his chest, and her tears felt like warm blood.
“I know,” he said. “I know.”
They stood like this for a while. The refrigerator door was still open, and he felt garishly framed in its rectangle of light. Then she pulled him to the kitchen bench. He leaned against its rigid back as she snuggled up against him, her face sticky with trails of dried tears. He kissed her on the forehead, holding her hand. She searched his face, waiting for words, but there was nothing more he could say. She climbed onto his lap, her fingers cool against his chest. She straddled him and grasped the back of the bench. Tilting her head back, she inhaled as if drinking something sweet from the air. Then she moved with resolve. Resolve was the right word, not passion. She had made a decision, not been overwhelmed by a feeling. He could tell the difference.
Her robe fell to the floor, and in her embrace he found a kind of peace, the crash, the ghost, all of it fading in the simplicity of her nakedness and her touch. He laid her across the table, which was hard and unyielding. Daniel whispered, “Let me move you,” and lifted her. Not far, slouching against the pantry, was a large sack full of rock salt, the kind the grocer’s boy brought on a mule along with enough onions for a month. Rebecca gasped in surprise as they fell softly against the canvas, the salt crunching beneath her body.
She laced her wrists around his neck. The night before their anniversary, there had been a single encounter, a cautious, almost virginal affair underneath blankets in the dark. Now a primitive version of her emerged. He lost himself in her. She had a way of making it seem like she was on top even when she wasn’t. Rebecca didn’t notice when a crystal of salt escaped from the canvas as she moved against it. Then another. And another. She never opened her eyes. Nor did she speak. She was only movement and breath. Salt streamed through the canvas now, forming crystalline trails.
Daniel wanted her to scream, not only to feel her pleasure, but because the terrible sounds were coming back. A body against a windshield. Brakes struggling against the laws of physics. His wife screaming a very different kind of scream, anguished and hoarse. The echo of a gunshot, the echo of a ghost.
When Rebecca came, it was like glass shattering. On the wall, the cuckoo lurched out of its hovel. Five o’clock. They both laughed at the incongruity of their union and the clock’s slapstick sound. Daniel’s own laugh sounded strange to him, like something from another time. Rebecca cuddled against him and slept until the cuckoo made its clanking appearance again at six o’clock. She smiled, showing off those perfect California teeth, a result of the braces that served as a rite of passage for every suburban teen.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
It was the worst thing she could have said. Daniel felt like a patient being evaluated by a nurse who’d just administered a drug.
“Never mind me,” he said. “How are you?”
She smiled again, shrugging into her bathrobe and tightening the belt. When she told him she wanted a shower, it sounded like she was asking for something, though Daniel didn’t know what. He stayed alone until the cook, Firooz, came down to make breakfast. He said nothing about the salt, but later that morning, Daniel heard the Hoover running in the kitchen.